The Funeral

A family has to organise a three day Buddhist funeral after the death of the grandfather. The problem is that nobody knows how it is done. The son in law and daughter are actors; they watch an instructional video to learn the ritual. How much to pay the priest, who sits where, who says what: each is its own crisis. Jūzō Itami writes and directs, in his first film, made at fifty one. His wife Nobuko Miyamoto stars. The story is lived. Itami organised his own father in law's funeral, saw how estranged the ritual had become, and wrote the film out of it. The subject is not death but custom. It shows a society that has preserved its tradition and lost the meaning of it: everyone trying to behave correctly, nobody knowing why. It won best film at the Japan Academy Awards and launched Itami's career. Tampopo and A Taxing Woman applied the same method to other institutions. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese social satire and comedies built on ritual. Who it is not for: the humour is very quiet and rests largely on knowing Japanese funeral custom. Some of the jokes are invisible from outside.